Standing in his dress uniform in the back of his Aurus convertible, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was driven around Red Square to review troops during last week’s Victory Day parade. It would be his last inspection in that role.
Over the weekend, President Vladimir Putin replaced Shoigu — the 68-year-old was the longest-serving member of his cabinet — in a rare Kremlin shakeup that took place even as a Russian offensive in northeastern Ukraine I was making progress.
Equally surprising was the choice to replace Shoigu: Andrei Belousov, a 65-year-old economics expert who has never dealt with the military or other law enforcement agencies.
Putting Belousov in charge of the Defense Ministry was seen as a way to tighten control over military spending and synchronize the burgeoning defense sector with the rest of the economy, hard hit by Western sanctions.
The reorganization took more than one expert by surprise, and some mysteries have yet to be revealed.
Shoigu’s job appeared to be in jeopardy early in the 2022 invasion, when Russia suffered battlefield setbacks that drew the ire of Russian hawks. He and Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov were widely blamed for the failure to capture Kiev, as well as the hasty withdrawal of Russian troops from northeastern and southern Ukraine amid a tough counteroffensive.
Last year, Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin unleashed a ferocious and profane verbal attack on Shoigu and Gerasimov, accusing them of incompetence and corruption. In June, Prigozhin launched a mutiny to demand his overthrow, seizing military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and sending his paid soldiers on a march toward Moscow that he called off hours later.
Two months later, Prigozhin and his top lieutenants were killed in a suspicious plane crash widely seen as Kremlin revenge, as Shoigu appeared to shore up his position. The Kremlin denied involvement.
Although he has held the post of defense minister for 11 and a half years, Shoigu’s fortunes appeared to take a further decline last month. His second-in-command, Timur Ivanov, was arrested on charges of bribery and brought to court still in his military uniform. Ivanov had been Shoigu’s top aide since before he became defense minister, and Kremlin observers saw this as a serious blow.
But Putin is known to abhor firing under pressure, and the staunchly loyal Shoigu, who has accompanied the president on vacations in the Siberian mountains over the years, was no exception. Shoigu had a soft landing and went on to head the presidential Security Council and replace Nikolai Patrushev. The role is roughly similar to that of the United States national security advisor.
Patrushev, a long-time hardline and powerful member of Putin’s inner circle, will get a new appointment to be announced soon, the Kremlin said, leaving another question unanswered.
“Shoigu is moving toward a respectable and powerful position because he is loyal and he and Putin are friends,” Dara Massicot, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program, said on social media platform X.
While Shoigu secures a dignified exit from the Defense Ministry, Belousov “will probably make organizational changes,” Massicot said.
Putting an economist in charge of the Defense Ministry was seen as a way to better manage what is a growing drain on Russia’s wealth as the third year of the war drags on.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized the need to more closely integrate the military sector with the economy to “synchronize it with the current dynamics.”
Belousov graduated from Moscow State University’s economics faculty and held a succession of senior government positions before serving as Putin’s economic adviser in 2013-20. Since then, he has been deputy prime minister in charge of economic strategies and advocated for stricter state controls.
The deeply religious Belousov has repeatedly spoken of the need to defend “traditional family values,” aligning him with Putin’s conservative agenda.
When Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, Belousov was reportedly the only member of Putin’s economic team to immediately support the move.
Belousov is not Russia’s first civil defense minister. Although Shoigu loved wearing a uniform, he had no military experience; Before becoming minister, he had headed the Ministry of Emergency Situations, responsible for civil defense and dealing with natural disasters. Previous defense ministers were Anatoly Serdyukov, head of the tax police, and Sergei Ivanov, former head of foreign intelligence.
But Belousov’s predecessors all got the job in peacetime, while he takes power at what many military analysts see as a turning point in the war: as Russia tries to take advantage of a slowdown in Western arms shipments to Ukraine. .
The Kremlin attempted to ease widespread confusion over Belousov’s election as defense minister by emphasizing that Gerasimov – the chief of the General Staff – is actually directing the fighting in Ukraine.
“The chief of the General Staff is, in many ways, the key person who reports directly to the commander in chief, Putin, and the minister is really just there to ensure that the military has what it needs,” said Mark Galeotti, chief of the General Staff. consulting firm Mayak Intelligence.
“Having an economist, someone who has been talking about the need to basically subordinate much of the economy to the needs of the defense sector, actually makes some sense. Now it is essentially the job of a financial manager,” he said in a comment.
Galeotti said Putin could still replace Gerasimov, describing him as “unimaginative, prone to truly wasteful operations” and “absolutely unwilling to tell the commander in chief, Putin, some of the realities of war.” “Ukrainians should hope that he will stay.”
Belousov is widely expected to purge the ministry of Shoigu’s top associates, a move that would hardly foster stability at a key moment in the conflict.
Still, Massicot and other observers believe that some popular commanders whom Shoigu viewed as rivals and tried to marginalize – among them General Sergei Surovikin, known for his long-standing ties to Prigozhin and credited with building defenses of multiple layers that hampered Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive last summer – could once again gain senior positions.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, said Putin’s key motive was to control corruption among the top brass, embodied by figures like Ivanov, who was arrested in April and accused of accepting massive bribes.
“The situation with Timur Ivanov has shown that corruption has crossed all limits,” Markov said. Another task for Belousov will be to work more closely with industries to quickly modernize the army, he added.
Putin probably hopes Belousov will better integrate the Defense Ministry’s agenda with broader economic policies, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“This effort sets the conditions for a more complete economic mobilization, suggesting that the Kremlin continues to prepare for a protracted war in Ukraine,” he said.
Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center also sees Belousov’s appointment as a sign that the Kremlin foresees a long war.
“Putin’s priority is war; The war of attrition is won by the economy,” he wrote. “Belousov is in favor of stimulating demand from the budget, which means that military spending will at least not decrease but increase.”
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